


We're All Slaves Here

by Alexdoesthings



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Peter Hale, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Dark Stiles, M/M, Mystery, Slave Trade
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 16:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1750817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexdoesthings/pseuds/Alexdoesthings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slave trading was never what Peter had imagined he would do with his life. Talia would be disappointed in him, but he refused to share her fate or that of her foolish son. He had to give the boy some credit, Derek did kill Kate, but he had only two futures now, as a dead man or a slave.</p><p>Peter liked his nephew enough not to chose the former for him but not enough to make this easy on him either. Stiles didn't earn his reputation by being kind, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Derek heard his uncle and some new client walking down the hall toward his cell and quieted his attempts to break the leather that restrained his arms. It was specially crafted to hold werewolves. The long leather strap clamped around both his wrists, binding his arms behind his back at an uncomfortable, upward angle and connected to a leather collar so if he relaxed too much he’d choke himself. Technically it was tighter than regulation but Peter wasn’t very concerned about his nephew’s comfort and wellbeing. Derek had been trying, since he was thrown in here, to break out, but it earned him nothing but another notch tighter in the leather and another chain bolted to the wall.

His uncle visiting Derek’s wing was rare but not unheard of; Peter liked to show him off to some of the more interesting clientele even though he couldn't technically sell him. Derek inclined his head to catch their conversation. This was harder than it sounded because the walls echoed the sounds around so much but he did catch a few words about himself and the name of the man coming to see him, Stiles Stilinski. Derek had heard that name before but the context was lost.

He could guess a fair amount about him though as he appeared in front of Derek’s cage with Peter and two guards in tow. Stiles had the same arrogant strut and high held head as the rest of the aristocratic humans who could afford werewolf slaves, as though he had any right to look down on them when any one of them was easily twice as strong as he was. He stopped in front of Derek's cage and looked him up and down, appraising him like a piece of art or, more accurately, meat.

"He looks like a Christmas ham the way you have him trussed up Peter,” his voice was threaded through with easy amusement as he pointed out the numerous chains trailing from Derek to their bolts in the wall.

“Well,” Peter’s voice was silken, poison honey and Derek looked up to glare at him, eyes ice blue and fangs bared, “You know how it gets, Stiles.”

Stiles smirked, his eyes never leaving Derek. “You should let me in to see him,” he said it courteously enough but there was power under the words of one whom it is unwise to answer with no.

“You understand the risks,” Peter asked lazily, reaching for his keys. Stiles rolled his eyes dramatically and Peter smirked, shoving the long key into the enormous lock and placing a hand on the scanner.

“Don’t rile him up too much, Stiles,” Peter warned lightly as he turned the key, “he’s enough trouble as is.” The system recognized his hand print, and the lock popped open with the grinding of many parts. He pulled the door aside for Stiles, the muscles in his arm straining his coat as he did so.

“You know me, Peter,” Stiles said mischievously as he stepped through past the heavy metal door, the two exchanging looks of dark humor as though this was a shared joke between them. Stiles met Derek’s eyes as he walked in and kept eye contact the entire time, getting closer and closer, totally at ease. There was something off about Stiles. His steady, unwavering, fearless stare was making Derek especially edgy. He growled warningly at him, glaring death and pain back at his casually appraising brown eyes. Stiles didn't seem at all affected by his display of aggression even when Derek snapped his jaws, showing off his fangs to their full extent. He stepped up to Derek and stopped only about six inches away from his nose, just out of reach but far too close for comfort. His eyes were oddly empty up close, showing none of the amusement he had displayed previously even though his mouth was still twisted up in that half smile. It was as though he was feeling none of the emotions he was pretending, and he was pretending them, Derek realized. Derek could smell no distinct emotions rising from him at all, as though he was merely a blank slate. This further unnerved Derek, his growl getting more pronounced, but Stiles still didn't seem to care. His eyes drifted away from Derek’s, surveying his face and traveling slowly down his body.

“Excellent muscle tone,” Stiles commented, seemingly to no one, eyeing Derek’s well toned abs and biceps. He reached a slow hand toward Derek and the werewolf shook in his restraints, trying to get Stiles away but the human only chuckled, his smirk widening. Derek shuddered against his touch as Stiles fingers brushed his stomach on the way to his arm. Stiles smirk widened and he rested his hand on the tense muscles of Derek’s forearm, long fingers curling in slightly to stroke along his skin. Derek tried to jerk away with a vicious motion but Stiles was unaffected. He watched Derek as his fingertips traced slowly up Derek’s arm, round his shoulder, down his collarbone, and up his throat. His fingers bumped against the leather collar and something flashed in his eyes for a second but it was gone before Derek could even guess at what it was. He assumed it was probably the same lust all the other felt when looking for a new wolf toy.

Stiles’s fingers reached the base of Derek’s head and slid slower than ever up under his chin. Derek lifted his head to try and keep the unwelcome fingers away but it was doing him no good and he knew it. “I think you should come home with me,” Stiles said, voice low and intimate as he finally reached the edge of Derek’s jaw and his hand unexpectedly clamped down on Derek’s chin, forcing his eyes back to Stiles. “What do you say?” Stiles got just a little closer with those last words, his eyes doing a very deliberate sweep of Derek’s exposed neck, his breath hot against Derek’s skin. Derek jerked forward violently, trying to bite Stiles, but the human jumped out of range laughing at him.

“I like this one,” he proclaimed, still laughing as though in triumph.

Peter’s face was carefully smoothed of emotion but for the pleasant smile still sitting on his lips, the perfect business face. “Physically, he’s one of the best I have,” Peter said carefully, “but he scores bottom marks in temperament.”

In this business that meant nothing good. Peter had tried to train him but Derek was uncontrollable, refusing to conform to his role, being moody when he should act neutral, being defiant when he should be submissive, and generally being difficult. It also meant, he was often reminded, that he was coming down the track for a heavy dose of aconite if he didn't straighten up but he refused to give Peter the satisfaction of watching him break.

Stiles gave Peter another of those dark looks they had shared before and said, “I think I can handle it.”

One corner of Peter’s mouth quirked upward as though he found this statement terribly funny and Derek had a bad feeling in his gut.

“You know he’s not technically for sale,” Peter said delicately.

Stiles had turned his back on Derek so he couldn't see the expression on his face but it made Peter’s mouth twist into a cruel smile as Stiles said, as though the very idea he would be denied was laughable, "I can deal with the Argents."

Derek knew Peter couldn't sell him; it was against every law because Derek had killed Kate. Although by those same laws he should be dead already for murdering a human, even one who murdered his family, which he strongly suspected is why Peter kept him alive. But this Stiles character, Derek had a bad feeling, was above the law in Peter’s book, which meant he was very bad news.

His suspicions were confirmed when Peter schooled his features again and said calmly, “Let’s get those papers drawn up then.”


	2. Chapter 2

Derek fully expected Stiles to touch him as soon as the door had been shut and the bolt thrown, but he did not feel any unwelcome hands as he used his senses to scope out the house. It was large, like he had expected, not nearly as big as the Hale manor had been before Kate got her hands on it, but big enough to show Stiles had come from wealth. The place was full of the dusty, confined smell of closed off rooms, some still filled with the smell of a woman and, more recently, a man who had once lived here but whose scents were faded with time. It had the air of a place that had once held a great deal of happiness but was now just a box for fading memories and lost, hopeless pacing in the middle of the night. The only recent smells were Stiles and another werewolf, who, by the smell of it, hadn’t been there in a long time.

Stiles himself wasn’t here very often from the looks of the covered furniture and the smell of recently unpacked and still unused linens. Derek assumed Stiles had moved to a place of his own at some point in the past decade but couldn’t bear to sell his childhood home and a location so close to the prime trading port that was Beacon Hills. He didn’t keep or bring any of his slaves here, Derek seemed unique in that respect. The house was not full of the tang of cruelty he had expected from the rumors. But Derek knew a thing or two about loss and loneliness, what it did things to a person, and every nook and cranny of the house was permeated with the smell.

Stiles came up behind him and Derek tense at the increased proximity. He could practically feel the smile on Stiles’s face as he asked wryly, "So, what do they say about me these days?"

He brushed by and Derek bristled but Stiles only hung up his things and placed his keys on a small table under the wanly empty row of hooks. He still didn’t touch Derek, which he found almost as unnerving. Seeing Derek’s ramrod posture out of the corner of his eyes Stiles turned to him and said calmly, no real expression on his face, “It’s not true, whatever it is. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Is that what you told the others,” Derek asked, his jaw clenched angrily.

Something flashed through Stiles’s eyes, like before, but Derek, again, didn’t catch it. Trying to read Stiles was like trying to catch a hurricane in a butterfly net. He turned his back on Derek, walked down a short hallway, and into another room, calling over his shoulder, “Believe it or not, I treat my werewolves well these days.”

“Yeah, being eviscerated sounds nice,” Derek growled low and sarcastic, not expecting the human to hear him.

“We’ve all got a past,” Stiles called back, “I’m not who I was back then.” There was the sound of rummaging and heavy cloth being unceremoniously tossed to the floor.

“Turning over a new leaf,” Derek scoffed, “You’re not the type.”

“You,” Stiles said calmly, popping back into the room with a pair of pants, “don’t even know me. Therefore you can’t even begin to guess at the great enigma that is the great lord Stilinski,” he laughed under his breath before he held up the jeans. He scowled as he eyeballed the obvious size difference and strode back, tossing the pants behind him and continuing, “And for the record, this whole system is a little too seventeenth century for my tastes. I’m a modern business man, I believe in killing the competition with innovation. So here's an idea, in the spirit of the new millennia, why don’t we legalize prostitution and crush half the slave demand right there?”

As he asked the question he reentered the entryway, looking at Derek as though he was actually expecting an answer. Derek scowled in confusion. There was something really weird going on here; Stiles was acting different as though he had dropped some pretense, but it was so dramatic a change it was more accurate to say he was a different person all together.

Stiles now held a worn, grey pair of sweatpants with a drawstring. Unperturbed by Derek’s lack of answer, Stiles continued as though the question had never existed, indicating the sweatpants as he held them up, “Sorry about these. I usually have things ready but I really didn’t expect to be picking anyone up when I showed my face. I’ll get you some clothes of your own soon. Do you have a preference?”

He glanced up at Derek who must have been giving him a look because Stiles cracked a smile and said, “My houseguests shouldn’t go without proper fashion of the day, when in Rome, right?”

He suddenly spotted the collar again as though he’d forgotten it was there until that moment. His expression soured into a glare as though the contraption had done him a deep, personal wrong. “Let’s get that thing off you,” his distaste was echoed in the words and Derek was all the more confused, not seeing any other restraints ready.

Stiles set the pants on the side table next to his keys and got right in Derek’s face again. It was different than last time; there was no menace or cruelty to it. The whole gesture was very businesslike and matter of fact, but that didn’t stop Derek tensing up and shifting his weight back defensively. Stiles got a look on his face at that, somewhere between exasperation and annoyance, apparently at Derek’s inability to catch on if his next words were any clue, “I’m not going to do anything. I swear. I don’t really want you as a slave.”

Stiles laid his hand very deliberately on Derek’s arm in a nonthreatening way almost like he was establishing the point of innocent touching. Derek instinctively leaned away from it but did not move his feet from their fixed position on the intricate patterns of the entryway rug.

“Just let me go then,” Derek said levelly with a chill in his voice that was part plea and part demand. Peter had probably informed Stiles, but Derek was, as ever, infuriatingly stubborn. Stiles was his own brand of stubborn though.

“I can’t,” Stiles said as his hand slid down Derek’s arm slowly. He felt the werewolf shudder and his muscles tense, the special leather being tested for a second. “You know why I can’t,” he said it clear and slow as he looked Derek dead in the eye.

Derek knew of course, a werewolf who ran away was immediately hunted down and punished by the worst of the slave codes and if it was found out that the owner of that werewolf had aided the escape in any way there was all hell to pay. Werewolves were property to be used, abused, and thrown away at their master’s leisure but the way Stiles talked about it almost made it seem like he didn’t approve.

That Derek didn’t believe for a second though. Stiles’s livelihood came from this business and Derek had heard rumors of the torture he used to put his slaves through. There was doubt prickling annoyingly at the back of his mind, however. When the door had shut behind them everything about his new owner had become more genuine so dramatically that it was rather unsettling.

Derek decided not to care one way or the other. If Stiles really didn’t want him, he had a chance to convince him to let him go and Derek would take any chance he got. Derek violently shook Stiles’s hand away, which Stiles surprisingly let fall, and squared his shoulders to the best of his ability with his hands bound as they were. “They won’t catch me,” he said, with conviction, certain.

Stiles looked at him for a few seconds like he was trying to figure out if Derek was serious or not. Derek’s expression did not change and Stiles suddenly outright laughed at him, like he’d made the joke of the century. Derek glared at him and stepped further into his space aggressively. He ignored Peter’s voice in his head telling him he was going to be punished for that.

Stiles sobered at the challenge, not giving ground, chin tilting defiantly as he said, “I hate to break it to you, but you couldn’t get past me, let alone the Argents.”

That hit a nerve and Derek found the words falling from his mouth without thought, cold and angry, “My arms might be bound, but I could still rip your throat out with my teeth.” He used the last word to reveal his fangs threateningly, knowing there was no going back from this action.

Stiles demeanor suddenly changed to something with more of a dangerous undercurrent. All signs of amusement melted away like a wax mask and Stiles’s teeth clenched with a sharp click. Derek’s instincts were building up to a scream in his head telling him to run as Stiles glared at him, ghosts of the past flitting across his eyes. Derek hadn’t felt seriously threatened by Stiles until this very moment because he’d simply been a skinny, unknown entity with a bad reputation. Now, Derek could see the cold, calculated sharpness of a killer in Stiles’s eyes.

Before Derek could react, Stiles’s hand slid under the leather collar and fisted on it.  He exposed his neck and pulled Derek toward it as he yelled, “Go ahead! See how far you get without me.”

Derek was so stunned his teeth returned to their blunt human form as he blinked at the reckless human holding him captive in his grip. Stiles held Derek there for a few long seconds, watching him with that fury in his face that iced Derek’s veins. Then Stiles shoved him back as he pulled his hand away. He turned away from Derek and paced almost into the next room, one hand gripping the wrist of the other behind his back so his knuckles turned white, like he was holding back with everything he had.

Stiles stopped and made an obvious effort to calm himself down. Then he took a deep sigh and said, more composed and business like, “Look, I know it’s not good enough, it won’t ever be, but I’m giving you a home here. As long as you stay on the property and you cooperate when other people are around, we’re equals in this household. You’ll have no trouble from me; I won’t force anything on you, that’s a promise.”

Derek did not relax his stiff, defensive posture. He knew Peter would not have sold him to Stiles were the human not at least half as bad as he was made out to be. He scoffed at the very idea that Stiles would ever treat him as his equal. “You’re my owner now. You can do whatever you want with me, Master,” He put a special venomous emphasis on the word that sent an odd twitch through Stiles’s body like he was fighting two polar opposite reactions.

Then Stiles’s face became that blank slate again along with the rest of him and Derek could read nothing from him once more. Stiles started walking with deliberate steps back toward Derek keeping their eyes locked. Derek did not want to give ground to Stiles’s advance but he wasn’t sure what his intentions were either. Stiles stopped when he was only inches from Derek with something like bitterness crawling across his features.

“I’m going to tell you a secret about this business Derek,” Stiles said with a dark look in his eyes, “We’re all slaves here.”

Stiles reached up to Derek’s neck and he flinched involuntarily. Stiles smiled humorlessly and gently undid the belt of leather tied at the back of Derek’s neck. He reached around, caught hold of it, and lowered it slowly down so Derek’s arms could unbend. Derek did not like Stiles’s fingers trailing so familiarly along his skin, lingering only a second longer than they should. His arms wrapped around Derek’s hips as he undid one hand and then the other from the complicated straps in a practiced motion.

Derek waited for him to finish, still tensed with an air that suggested he was waiting for Stiles to do something unsavory. Stiles finally undid the latch on Derek’s wrist and pulled the whole thing away, both arms retreating back to his sides. Derek brought his hands in front of him and rubbed at the red skin there that was quickly fading. Neither of them moved back, simply caught in the halfway world deciding how much the other could be trusted.

They stared each other down and Derek felt that this was the moment to kill Stiles and get out now. He didn’t move to do anything though. He couldn’t say why, but the moment passed and Derek felt as though that settled something between them, broke some tension in the room. Stiles slowly turned back to the small table where he’d set his things, movements deliberate again as though he was trying not to startle Derek.  Stiles had not been afraid at any point that Derek would kill him, even though he’d spilled human blood before, as though he’d known Derek wouldn’t hurt him. Derek almost felt as though he’d been backed into something without knowing it. It garnered an odd and begrudging respect from him but he was warier still for his own change of heart.

Stiles pulled open one of the drawers and dumped the restraints into it with an expression that suggested he was handling noxious waste. His expression cleared to a more satisfied one as he shut the drawer and grabbed the grey sweatpants sitting atop the table. He held them out to Derek like a peace offering and asked, humor sparkling in his eyes, “Can we settle for belligerent roommates for now?”

**Author's Note:**

> Check me out on Tumblr [here](http://alexdoesthings.tumblr.com/)


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